Canonical, the company behind the popular Linux distro Ubuntu, has made an exciting announcement that will delight its user base and, more precisely, its enterprise customers.
Legacy Support: A New Horizon for Ubuntu LTS
Starting with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, Canonical is extending its Long-Term Support (LTS) from the standard five years to an impressive 12 years. This extension is made possible by introducing the Legacy Support add-on for Ubuntu Pro subscribers.
Historically, Ubuntu LTS releases have been supported for five years, ensuring users receive essential security updates and maintenance.
However, recognizing the evolving needs of enterprises, Canonical announced its Ubuntu Pro program in early 2023. It offers a subscription that extends this support to 10 years, covering both “Main” and “Universe” software repositories.
This comprehensive coverage is now expandable to 12 years with the Legacy Support add-on. Maximilian Morgan, Global VP of Support Engineering at Canonical, expressed excitement over the new offering:
We’re thrilled to offer our customers additional years of security maintenance and support for Ubuntu LTS releases. With Legacy Support, we empower organisations to navigate their operational needs and investments into open source with confidence, ensuring their systems remain available, secure, and supported for many years to come.
The move is particularly beneficial for large, established production systems where transitioning to a new OS version can be daunting. The Legacy Support add-on aims to provide these organizations with the stability and peace of mind needed as they plan their migration strategies.
Support services, available through Ubuntu Pro, offer additional reassurance for customers needing assistance with troubleshooting, bug fixes, and other complex issues.
Extended Support for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Beyond
The Legacy Support add-on ensures that organizations running even the 10-year-old Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (with End-of-Life April 2, 2024) can continue receiving expanded security maintenance and support until April 2026, allowing IT managers and software architects to focus on their upgrade plans and application-level support confidently.
Now, let’s delve into a topic of widespread interest: leveraging the extended support offered by Ubuntu Pro. As anticipated, Ubuntu Pro is a paid service, and the new Legacy Support add-on predictably falls into this category as well. This means one must be a registered user of Ubuntu Pro to benefit from its features.
However, there’s excellent news: Ubuntu Pro is accessible at no cost for individual users, allowing free registration for up to five machines.
Bottom Line
In conclusion, it’s worth noting that Canonical’s strategic business decision positions Ubuntu a step ahead of other enterprise Linux distributions such as RHEL, Rocky, and Alma, which provide 10-year support for their releases. This move is well-considered and enhances Ubuntu’s competitive edge in the market.
For more information, visit the official announcement.
hello,
a short note to state that your conclusion is partly erroneous, as Red Hat does provide an add-on, ELS, Extended Lifecycle Support, to RHEL, extending its lifecycle from 10 years to 12 to 14 years. This ELS add-on exists since 2012, and has been available for RHEL 4, RHEL 5, RHEL 6 and RHEL 7.